


driven by fury

by phantomphaeton



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: BAMF Sansa Stark, Dark Sansa Stark, Eventual Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, F/M, Jon Snow Knows Nothing, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, King Jon Snow, POV Sansa Stark, Sansa Stark is Queen in the North, Sansa Stark-centric, but also an idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:46:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22188847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomphaeton/pseuds/phantomphaeton
Summary: A single secret needs a million lies to build the walls it hides behind.Jon feared his queen. He feared the fire. He feared the scales. He feared the teeth. He feared the dragon.Butreallyhe should have feared the wolf more.~When Jon returns to Winterfell with a stranger he calls queen, Sansa gives him the benefit of the doubt. When this fails her, her dismantling of his world is swift, decisive, and ruthless as the Iron Throne he now calls his own.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 211
Kudos: 754





	1. forged from suffering

**Author's Note:**

> David and Danny told us Sansa was a master manipulator, but we never got to see any of her savvy in the show. I was pissed, and I still am. Sansa stark at full mindbending capacity would have given Jon Snow whiplash. I got to wondering how, and then I wrote this.  
> NOTE: This rendition of Sansa Stark is, without the slightest exaggeration: STONE FUCKING COLD. I am not messing around. I have made her utterly ruthless and I'm not even remotely sorry for it. This is an exploration of how a person who has survived all the shit she's survived would handle the mess that D&D placed her in circa season 8. If it's too much for you, move along quietly.  
> 

_A single secret needs a million lies to build the walls it hides behind, but the truth is always— **always** —brought to light._

“He’s coming,” Bran tells her one quiet afternoon.

Spring has come to the North, with green shooting out of the ground and snow melting into the dirt. She feels it warming the ice in her bones, the frost in her eyes—it doesn’t touch her heart.

Sansa’s become an excellent study of character.

“When?” she asks.

“He’ll be here in a fortnight.”

She makes some small noise—has to pretend that she cares, but the truth is that it makes no difference to her. In a fortnight or in a twelvemonth, he is coming. He is bringing with him all of his anger and bitterness, all of his wounded pride. He’s blistering from the rage, she just _knows_ it. He’s _furious_ with her.

_Because we’re family_.

She laughs.

He’s angry. He’s coming. He wants to give her a piece of his mind, rub into her face how wrong she has been all this time. She keeps stitching into the spring. She’s ready. She’s matched wits with the sharpest of men. She can handle a witless dragonwolf.

.

_She doesn't want to let it eat away at her. She's good at that. Taking the sentiment that ought to consume and making it hers to command. Grief. Guilt. Bitterness._

_Rage._

_One by one, she learned to take them all. She keeps them locked away in a chamber in her heart, surrounded by an ever frozen wall of ice._

_She is no summer child, no simpering hare, no little bird. She is a lifeless thing. Forged from suffering, hardened by pain, driven by fury._

.

The angry dragonwolf arrives in a fortnight and a day, riding into the courtyard on the back of a shining black horse. Sansa allows Bran to be out in the yard to welcome him, as Bran is so fond of unsettling people with that blank stare of his. She’d be out there—she would—but he’s angry with her. Angry enough that he might not be able to stop himself from making a massive scene the moment he lays eyes on her, and she’d rather avoid knocking him off that high and mighty horse of his in public. That simply cannot be good for his kingly image.

But she is prepared. She has studied her argument carefully. She has consulted her brother with his three eyes, built up her defenses, stocked her provisions. She is ready for battle. She’s had a year to prepare. And Jon? He’s squandered the year simmering in his ire and animosity.

It is tragic, truly, that after all this time he’s still foolish enough to think he can argue with her using only his precious feelings and a slight rise to his voice. Jon, too, is driven by fury—but sometimes that is a dangerous thing. It is a dangerous thing when he has been forged from fury, hardened by fury. There must always be ice to temper fire. Sometimes it seems as though Jon was born to be a pawn.

After all this time, _still_ he underestimates her.

Sansa is ready. She has a hidden weapon buried _deep_ in her arsenal—a secret only she knows. She and Jon—she’d make the argument that Bran might know it as well, but his third eye cannot see into people’s hearts. But her hidden secret gives her such power, makes her argument stronger, makes the knife she’s been sharpening this past year so much _sharper_. She is ready to cut. She holds it steady, poised and waiting, ready for him to come breathing fire down the halls that she might thrust it forth and pierce his heart.

Jon Snow will never disappoint her again.

.

_"He has betrayed us," Lord Royce said in the dark, quiet safety of her solar. There were no callers to her chambers on that day—an entire army was being hosted. It was a moment of stillness, while the wolf in her lifted its nose to the air, stirred to life by the scent of fresh blood._

_She had leaned back in her seat, a rare show of relaxation. Her fingers icy, clutched around the scroll._

_I have declared Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen as the rightful queen of the Seven Kingdoms._

_"Let's not be too quick to assign blame," she said. "Let's wait and see."_

_This had pacified Lord Royce, who in turn pacified the men. Their weapons were not sheathed, only lowered. Sansa preferred it to be this way. For she has become a cautious thing, senses honed and mind sharpened. Pain is her whetstone, grief her master. She stayed her anger, allowing room for coercion. Because he may indeed have been coerced. Fool that he was, fool that she used to be. She accounted for force. She knows what it is to be a lone wolf beneath a sweltering southron sun, howling to another's tune—howling to another's moon._

_There are always consequences._

.

There is a brief spell of silence during which time the King is being shown to his chambers. Sansa intended this, having the castellan Gared escort him as if he is a stranger instead of a boy who once called these halls his home. The insult might not be lost on him, surely with his state of mind it might even worsen his mood. Sansa wonders if Gared has a thick enough skin not to take offense.

There are precious few in the world who have learned what she has learned, to harness things like rage and anger. Jon is not one of those precious few.

.

_A card signed in a flourishing hand is placed on her desk when she sits down._

_Sansa._

_As if the Lady of Winterfell is a serving girl to be summoned in her own home. She cannot find it in herself to acknowledge such a thing, and she doesn't know why. She has born so many insults in her life—they are nothing. But this—this hits too close to her heart. Because this insult comes from_ her _, and she was brought here by_ him _._

_She has found a new pupil to teach how to treat her._

_She casts the card into a basket and ignores the summons. She has work to be done. Far more important, she knows, than whatever farce of friendship the queen wishes to extend._

.

She dines in her solar as she works. There isn’t really anything for her to be working on right at this moment, as she’s already overseen the final details of the castle’s restoration and taken stock of their larders. But in the Great Hall, the King of the Seven Kingdoms is simmering in his fury, and Sansa knows that if they are going to get this out of the way, then the simmer needs to be turned up to a boil.

Jon’s secret developed not in her presence, but in her absence. And instead of tempering him, it only made him hate her more. Oh, how he hates her. How he _despises_ her. How he wishes she would just _disappear_ —

She’s going to have _so much fun_ tearing his mind to shreds.

Jon feared her, his silver dragon queen. He feared her temper and her fire and her ambition and her greatness. So he contented himself with trotting on every toe he could see, eager to upset anyone he could in a show to appease her. Eager to show his worth. Eager to bury his secret. Eager to pretend he didn’t have one.

She smiles at the irony.

He feared his queen. He feared the fire. He feared the scales. He feared the teeth. He feared the dragon.

But

_really_

he should have feared the wolf more.


	2. winter woke the wolf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Repeat warning: Sansa Stark is not a person who buries hope beneath layers of ice. She is the ice, and she is brutal with no fucks given. If that ain't your cup of tea, step away quietly.

_**'Of all the wild beasts of land or sea, the wildest is woman.' - Menander of Athens** _

_Jon knocked before he entered her solar, as he once did when Ramsay's corpse was still cooling. His gaze was warm, but it'd been a long time since she cared for warm things. He pulled off his gloves, eyes slowly taking in the room. She knew it had changed. She preferred to keep it darker._

_"Have you left this room at all today?" He asked._

_"Is there something you need?" She asked in response._

_"I..." he sounded lost, but she would not look up to confirm this. "I think she wanted to speak to you. Earlier."_

_"Is that so?" Sansa's eyes did not leave the parchment. "Well, she knows where to find me."_

_Silence._

_The wolf within was still, lips pulled back, snarl at the ready. She calmed it with a breath. She would not bite, for her bite was a foul thing, and once the wolf was uncaged there was no stopping it until the fit of rage passed. Jon was not ready to see such fury. He has never been ready for it._

_Jon looked at her and sighed. "She'll be a good queen, Sansa," he told her._

_Rage. Red hot, winter chill. She tempered it. He has never been ready for it._

_"I do not doubt your judgement, Jon," she assured him. "If you say she shall be a good queen, then I shall endeavor to believe you. As it is, I am a terribly busy woman. You may speak with her in my stead."_

_"She asks to speak with you."_

_"What an honor," Sansa said. "To be summoned like a handmaid to the glorious presence of the dragon queen. Forgive me for not jumping for joy—there comes a point where one must ration their excitement."_

_Her voice was heavy with irony, and the wolf within had chops dripping with spittle and it was hungry, and angry, and wild._

.

To bring a simmer to a boil, the promise of a meeting or a greeting needs to be dangled before him like a carrot. Sansa knows how this works. She walks along the ramparts hurriedly, soundly ignoring the clanging and clashing of steel swords in the courtyard below.

He’s down there. She knows. And he’d never miss the red of her hair.

There’s a shift in the breeze and she can _feel_ his gaze on her. She can feel the heat of his stare, can almost hear the unspoken accusations he wants to _fling_ in her face.

She shan’t give him the time to say them. She shan’t even give him the time to call her name. She has crossed from one side of the yard to the other too quickly for him to do anything besides stare, and as she reenters the castle, she can feel the water start to bubble.

Oh, how he _hates_ her.

Some distant fragment of her heart whispers that he may never forgive her for what she’s become. For what she’s done. He sees it, she knows, as a great and terrible wrong. And perhaps in some ways it is. But Jon has never apologized for the way he’s turned out, for the wrongs he’s done, to win. Why should she?

.

_"She only wishes to make peace with you," Jon said._

_"We are already at peace," Sansa told him softly. "I will see her when you depart. Though I stand by what I said before—you risk everything by leaving now."_

_"I'd have imagined you'd be thrilled to have her gone," he said quietly._

_"What would give you that impression?" She asked. "I'm certain that it was I and I alone who argued in the war council today that the army remain in Winterfell. It is her decision, as you said. To quote you specifically: what she commands, we shall obey."_

_Jon was quietly studying the floor as he spoke. “You were provoking her in there.”_

_“I hadn’t been aware that she felt so threatened by basic reasoning. Was it beyond my jurisdiction as the Lady of Winterfell to care for the wellbeing of my soldiers?"_

_“It’s deeper than that,” Jon said. “You haven't gotten along well. You haven't been welcoming to her."_

_Sansa looked up at this, slowly and sweetly. "I wish you had told me sooner how inhospitable I've been towards her," she said. Jon met her eyes questioningly. "Tell me quickly, Jon, for I simply must remedy this before she leaves—who from my castle has denied her shelter? Food? Supplies? What great suffering has she endured at my hands? Don't keep me in suspense—if there is a flaw in my hospitality, I always hope to be sensible of it."_

_Jon blinked, thrown by the dulcet tone of her voice and shuffled his feet as though unable to decide if she was being serious or not. She watched him, wide eyed and pretty, the picture of perfect innocence and confusion, waiting for him to tell her that people had come to her asking for medicine for their bleeding wounds, food for their empty bellies, clothes for their chilled backs, and he came to her because his queen was smarting from a deficit in adoration._

_Never particularly skilled with words—and certainly never skilled enough to match wits with her—Jon remained silent. She turned back to her ledgers. "I shall see you when it is time to depart. Close the door behind you."_

_Jon had spent a year in Dragonstone being made the slave of its mistress—he knew well how to respond to commands._

_Like a good dog, he disappeared from her sight. The wolf was placated, hackles lowered for the moment._

.

The scrolls sit like beacons calling to her every time she’s in her solar. She keeps them tucked away in an ornate box purchased from a travelling merchant as a gift for her from Lord Manderly. It’s made from such a lovely, luminescent stone. White jade, he’d called it. The stone catches the light and glows from within, like porcelain.

Every time she looks at it, she grins. Oh, she’s going to have fun.

It’s been three days. The water is bubbling. It’s nearly time.

.

_Aegon. Aegon Targaryen._

_"This changes nothing," Arya had vowed as she embraced him._

_It changed everything._

_"You are still you," Sansa assured him. It was the truth. Sansa had already promised herself she would not lie to Jon again. Jon was still Jon. Still breathtakingly stupid, still heartstoppingly imbecilic, still utterly and consummately simple. In this, she was pleased to see, nothing had changed._

_Everything had changed._

_Alone again in her chambers with only the echo of the closing door, Sansa sat back and thought. The wolf was sleeping, but not dead._


	3. stoking the flame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It dawned on me that I should put this disclaimer down: this entire story was inspired by a single quote, which I used in the summary and the beginning of the story, 'secrets need a million lies'. Played with it, obvi, and had a fuckton of fun with it.

**_"We are human, and the Gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and out great tragedy."_ **

.

When the huntsman’s axe finally comes down, Sansa is seated in the Godswood, skirts swirling in the breeze. It is not a moment she had intended for Jon to see, a moment where she is close to candid and happy, Jaime Lannister of all people having been the one to tease the laugh from her lips.

“People will talk soon,” he warns her. “If they are not talking already.”

“And what do they say?”

“It is known among those who observe that you have yet to extend a greeting to the King. There are some here who might hope to capitalize on potential discord. I’d hate to see House Stark fall into disfavor with the Crown.”

“I had no idea you had taken so keen an interest in the whispers of Winterfell.”

“Some of your lords are a shallow bunch,” Lord Lannister says. “Building snowmen to say that armies stand behind them. I could care less what the likes of them say. But you have made it far on being aware of the goings on. I thought perhaps if you were not aware to bring it to your attention.”

“And what do you think, My Lord?”

Lord Lannister scratches at his clean-shaven chin. A single sapphire dangles from the silver chain tied round his wrist—a token from his warrior of a wife. “If you were to speak with him, I would wish it only be done for your own peace of mind, and not merely to silence the whispers around you. A wolf does not concern itself with the opinions of a sheep.”

Sansa raises a brow. “I imagine the original interpretation of that phrase had more to do with lions than wolves.”

Jaime shrugs. “Teeth, claws, and bloodlust. One beast is every beast. Now pray tell, Lady Stark—which of these sorry sods will spend the rest of his life being eviscerated by your honey-tongue?”

Sansa shakes her head with a smile tugging on her lips. “I’ve only heard stories of men so besotted they rush to couple every soul in the world. I’ve never seen one in the flesh.”

“I’ve always been a romantic,” he says, and she laughs at this as if they are friends.

They are not. She has no friends. She has allies, and she has enemies, and she has had enough sense beaten into her to know the difference between the two.

Of course Jon does not know this, so when he enters the Godswood and finds them bent so close, smiles so wide, eyes so bright, his face is a canvas of resentment and ire and the pot has begun to boil.

She grins harder when she knows he has seen her, and pretends that she has not noticed him. Let him taste the blade he pierced her with, dangling his fair southron beauty before her. She may dangle her own fair southron beauty before him, and he may relish the sting.

.

_The maester's tower had barely survived the battle, so Sansa found her quarry in an antechamber of the great hall. He was difficult to miss, a portly thing with a warm face and a small blonde child dogging his every step._

_"Samwell Tarly," She said quietly, and he jumped._

_"Lady Stark," he greeted her with a bow. "It's—it's lovely to see you out and about. People had begun to worry—you'd been locked in your solar for so long."_

_"I've been terribly busy," she said. "Reassessing our supplies. Taking stock. It's a shame our guests are leaving so soon. I could have had much more free time were I not stuck upstairs running sums to supply them for their journey."_

_Sam's face grew dark at the mention of their guests, and the wolf could smile. Here was one who had not yet learned to temper their rage._

_"Well...good riddance," Sam said quietly, looking over his shoulder._

_"We are quite alone," Sansa assured him. "You needn't fret. I always protect my own."_

_Sam smiled at her, such a trusting thing. "Winterfell is lucky to have such a diligent Lady watching over it."_

_Sansa smiled. "I understand you came here straight from the Citadel, did you not?"_

_"I did, my Lady."_

_"I also understand you found some very interesting information there regarding my...cousin."_

_Sam looked at her. "I did."_

_"You were the one, were you not, to inform my cousin of this development directly?"_

_"I was, my Lady."_

_"I imagine that in the state of mind that development left him in, he wasn't quite able to muster the presence of mind to swear your fine self to secrecy."_

_Sam cleared his throat. "No, he did not."_

_Sansa tutted under her breath. "That is terribly reckless of him. That is the sort of information that could severely prejudice the continent against her—why, it might cost her the throne."_

_Sam's face changed again, grew dark again, and his brows knitted together as he processed this information. "It is quite an incendiary bit of gossip, isn't it?"_

_"Indeed. Imagine what were to happen if the Citadel published this information? I dare say that's more fire and blood than even the queen can manage."_

_Sansa sighed, looking out the window at the grounds. Sam had said nothing for several minutes. "I don't imagine Jon would wish for such information to become public," Sam said._

_Sansa nodded. "Of course what Jon wants is what truly matters. For better or worse, we are all of us the property of the Iron Throne now. We live and prosper by the grace of our blessed queen."_

_Sam's face was the night. "Certainly."_

_Sansa straightened up and dusted off the hem of her gown. "I'll leave you to your work, Sam. You are an invaluable asset to Winterfell. We're terribly lucky to have you."_

_Sam smiled at her distractedly, and she could see the gears in his head turning._

.

She attends dinner in the main hall tonight, cloaked in wintery gray and frosty blue that makes her eyes sparkle. She seats herself daintily on the far end of the table, leaving the King to fume to himself in Ned Stark’s seat. She has her back to him in mere instants, electing to stoke the flames just a _smidge_ by gracing the Lord of Casterly Rock with her attentions.

Jaime Lannister is here for trade negotiations. A futile attempt to present himself as a better man than he’s been before. Sansa knows this to be a meaningless effort. The wolf in her has known betrayal, and has known men. She expects the first, and never trusts the second. But he cannot know this, and she does not allow him to. She cloaks her mistrust in smoldering smiles, her suspicion in doe eyed gazes. He doesn’t know that she smiled as she listened to her last husband’s dying screams. He doesn’t know that she uses them to lull herself to sleep at night when the fear tries to consume her. He cannot know, this golden lion, because he sees what he wishes to see—what all men wish to see when they look upon her. A pretty face, a sweet smile. They miss the wolf lurking within, waiting for them to fall asleep so she may tear their throats.

She feels his eyes on her, gray and cold and unblinking. He’s never been very good at the game. She wonders how she might teach him to play.

.

_Sansa did not stand in the courtyards or the ramparts to see Jon off, and this was done on purpose. But she would never lie to him—she did see him off. She saw him off from the window at her solar, where she was too high up for him to spot her. He turned his head left and right as he walked out, and she knew his eyes were searching for her. He was attached to her. Some stupid part of her whispered that it was because she was the first family he found since it all went to hell so many years ago...but she had learned not to listen to that part of herself._

_His horse stirs one hoof outside the gates, and she has kept her promise. Ignoring the rest of the march, she quits her spot by the window and makes her way to the nest of her Three Eyed Raven._

_“You are playing quite a game,” Bran said as she closed the door behind her._

_“Arya?” Sansa asks simply, taking a seat on the edge of his bed._

_“Preparing to leave. She has refused the suit of Lord Baratheon.”_

_“Excellent thing,” Sansa says. “Gendry Baratheon strikes me as an idiot.”_

_“All men strike you as idiots.”_

_“You do not.”_

_“I am not a man anymore.”_

_“I thank you for the constant reminder. Let us turn our attention to more pressing matters. Lady Brienne has already begun her southward march with my gift for the queen. Is she making good time?”_

_“She will arrive in King’s Landing long before the Dragon Queen does. All is as I told you before. Except for the new development of our Kingslayer noting her absence.”_

_Sansa’s eyes narrowed at this. “Will he go after her?”_

_“Unlikely. He hasn’t a clue where she’s gone. He is more likely to approach you for answers.”_

_Sansa nodded slowly, mulling this over. Irrelevant information. Jaime Lannister was useless to her as anything more than a glorified ‘guest’ kept there to keep his half-wit brother in line down south. She filed this scrap of news away in her mind._

_When Jaime Lannister did come to speak with her later, she was not surprised. Nor was she surprised to see him wringing his good hand, the nervous shift in his eyes, his handsome features gone ruddy with cold and pale with worry. Love is real, she knew this. Selfless love, warm hands and warmer gazes and soft kisses and kindness. All of them were true. She had witnessed them all. In the sweet words Cersei would whisper to Tommen when Joffrey made him weep. In the passionate kisses the Red Viper gave his vibrant love. In the playful glances between a golden rose and her grandmother. But most of all, she witnessed them right here in Winterfell. When her father smiled upon her mother, and she beamed at him in return. Such love was true and tangible, spoken and shown, shining and fragrant and always, always out of her reach._

_It is man’s nature to crave love. That does not mean they shall ever taste it. This was the cruelest lesson life ever taught her, and to date it was her favorite one._

_She sits back against the wall, watching her shell of a brother gaze into the flames crackling in the grate. He once dreamed of being a knight. Whatever is left still inside him may yet dream. But it is just as well that he is not a man. Whether they be pig farmers or golden kings, men are all slaves to the things they crave._


	4. she is an arrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoop here it is, the first encounter. Not THE encounter, but it's coming.

_**'The water hears and understands. The ice does not forgive.'** _

The wolf sniffs the air. There are wounds nearby. Sansa remains seated, soft and pretty, red and blue and sparkling in the snow. Hands clasped together, head bent in prayer. She looks to the bleeding tree, white barked and crimson leaves, and pretends she has something left to pray for.

She’s learned to answer her own prayers.

She smells blood like a beast, and her lips curve into a smile. She tempers her anticipation, heartbeat steady. She’s danced this dance so many times.

The shuffle of snow behind her stops. The wounds smell as if they’ve been left to fester for years. Left too long to the open air. Sansa’s is not a gentle balm, but this is not a minor wound. It is old, and the poison runs deep. The wolf licks its chops.

“I mean not to disturb you in your prayers,” his voice is gruffer somehow. Deeper. This has less to do with age, and she knows better than to say it is the weight of new wisdom. It is rage, because what else could it be? What could weigh him down, but anger?

He was a boy once, watching the world from the shadows as it spun without him. He could have died, and none would have noticed. Another headstone, another grave. Shipped off to a wall of ice to spend his days in a cloak of black on the edge of the world. Forged from fury.

“I do not pray, Your Grace,” she says, sweet as a summer bird. “You interrupt nothing.”

A light flurry of movement as his figure lumbers into the shadow of her periphery. Hair tied back, beard trimmed so short it is only stubble dusting his cheeks. A cloak of black and white and red. Wolves and dragons dancing cross the clasps. Slowly, slowly, he sinks into a seat she once watched her father occupy. Her eyes do not meet his, but she spares him the sweetest smile. His breath hitches audibly, and she knows that the year that has passed since he rode south for his queen has done nothing but make her more beautiful.

“I am returned to Winterfell these last three days,” he says as if she asked, as if she somehow hasn’t noticed. “I am settled well.”

She tips her head demurely. “I am glad to hear this, Your Grace,” she tells him. “Winterfell is a rustic, dull thing to all of the glittering delights of the Red Keep, but Your Grace is well received.”

His brow twitches, dark and heavy, on his face. There is more he wishes to say, words that have no resemblance to anything remotely kind or gentle. She can smell them—they are the poison that festers the wounds. She will not deny him the chance to purge them from his heart—she will deny him nothing. He is, will always be, her king. He must be, for she has chosen him. And because she has chosen him, he will have everything.

“I was most concerned,” he says. “Astonished, truly, that with both a capable Maester and a more than competent castellan to provide assistance, you still seem to have so little time to yourself.”

“I am loathe to pass too many of the tasks onto others,” Sansa replies. “Regrettably, it is not often that I can be prevailed upon to stir from my solar. But as I said, my King is well received.”

He grunts in response to this, and she smiles as gentle and harmless as a little bird. “I had not been aware that you keep such close contact with my Warden of the West.”

“Lord Lannister is an ally and the husband of my former sworn shield,” Sansa replies easily. “Any young lady tasked with leading an entire region alone should be lucky to have an experienced soldier turned governor as a companion.”

Something in Jon visibly bristles at this—for is _he_ not the same? She pretends she has not noticed as she rises to her feet. “I will leave you to pray, Your Grace.”

“I do not pray, my Lady,” he says instantly, eyes glaring venomously at the cruel curve of her mouth.

“Perhaps then you must do as I do,” she says. “And answer your own prayers.”

She rises to her feet, giving him a curtsey that is deep and prim and positively _dripping_ with dryness. She leaves him in the peaceful silence beneath the bleeding branches, white barked and crimson leaves.

He is, will always be, her king. He must be, for she has chosen him. And because she has chosen him, he will have everything. He will have his home, and he will have peace. He will have his heart’s hidden desires, and he will have _her_.

But first

she will have _him_.

.

_Samwell Tarly sang like a canary._

_The Citadel stumbled upon the fraying journal of an old, respected Septon, and news of a scandalous secret marriage leaked amongst the lords and ladies of the continent._

_Then came the claims that a young man had been seen riding a dragon beside the last Targaryen. Then came the testimony of one Howland Reed. Then came the storm._

_"It's been an alarming turn of events," Lord Manderly said to Sansa as they walked through the glass houses. Sansa's eyes darted from one pane to another, searching for cracks or weaknesses in the walls._

_"Quite," she agreed. "Most disconcerting. Especially when one considers how such claims discredit our former king."_

_She feigned interest in the wall, fingers pressing to the glass, testing it. It had to appear to be a passing thought, a trifling concern. The greatest treasons are hatched from the smallest seedlings._

_"I'm certain that his northern lineage would have prevented any of the lords from holding too large a spyglass to the poor man," Manderly said carefully._

_"Indeed," Sansa said. "To be honest with you, however, I worry for what might happen if anyone were to learn how long he has been filling the dragon Queen's bed."_

_Manderly raised a brow. "Quite scandalous. Is there any benefit of marriage to be gained?"_

_"I imagine there must be, as they have been lovers since long before they arrived in Winterfell."_

_She took another step, concerned with a new pane. Manderly was silent for a moment. "I wonder when he learned of this news. If it had some bearing on his decision to bend the knee to the woman."_

_Sansa looked at Manderly, false shock coloring her features. "My Lord," She said. "Jon was very clear about his reasons for bending the knee to the dragon queen. He has reminded us time and again of them—she will be a good queen."_

_Manderly stared at her. "Do you truly believe that, my Lady?"_

_Sansa hid her smile. "What other reason could there be?" She wondered._

_She had waited when they had been alone that first evening. Waited for him to tell her that he had been afraid, had been forced, that there had been no other way._

_“I did what I had to do to survive,” he would say, and because she understood—because she was the only person alive who did—she would believe him. She would embrace him, her half-brother with his devastating secret, and she would assure him that they would protect each other._

_But it had not been so._

_I told you we needed allies._

_None of it matters._

_Do you have any faith in me at all?_

_“There is no other reason I can see,” Sansa said to Lord Manderly flatly, testing another pane. “Jon has chosen to bend the knee to a woman for what he believes to be the good of the North.”_

_“And that this woman should be his lover is a happy coincidence?” Manderly asked skeptically._

_“Certainly. Just as I believe that her rule from the Iron Throne should place him in a position to potentially inherit all seven kingdoms is only another happy coincidence. Jon is acting in the best interest of his people and his family.”_

_Though which family she was referring to, she conveniently did not specify._

_._

Heavy hands, golden gauntlets, and worm-lipped liars have found their own ways to teach her that life does not play fair. If one intends to win, then one must play similarly. Sansa floats into the great hall this evening, cloaked in silks and satins of the deepest silver, diamonds dripping from her neck, hair a twist of shining crimson fire atop her head. She has learned over the years what it means to be beautiful, what it means to be brutal. One seldom implies the other, but what a thing to behold when they are joined.

Her smile is the nock.

She ignores the silence that swallows the room as she pauses before the king. His eyes are gleaming in the firelight, staring resolutely at the honey-glazed ham before him. Eyes so dark she could have drowned in them once, but even darkness is afraid of her now. Her lips curve and his throat bobs and she is breathtaking, she knows, so unjustly _beautiful_.

Her manners are the fletching.

“Your Grace,” she is all sugary sweetness as she sinks into a curtsy that is deep and angelic and wordlessly insincere. “Such a fine gathering has not been seen in Winterfell since your departure last year. You’ve breathed life into the very walls.”

It’s nonsense, utter drivel, and a single glance to the faces of the unforgiving lords and ladies seated at the tables beyond would prove this if she cared enough to look. Jon sits gloomily, one elbow resting on the arm of his seat, supporting his darkening face. His hand is twitching, fingers over his mouth as he watches her, wide eyed and stupid, and she rejoices in his perfect, plentiful misery.

Her words are the shaft.

“You are too kind, Lady Sansa,” Jon says carefully as she goes on smiling. She will not rise, remaining there in her semblance of humility. She knows this act, on her knees before a foolish king with more beauty than brains and less than half a clue what is coming. “You have done well for Winterfell. I see a great deal has changed since I left. The North is lucky to have such a diligent, devoted guardian.”

She almost blows him a kiss, but that will come later. For now, she ducks her head in a show of deference. “And the Seven Kingdoms are lucky to have such a worthy king. The crown does you credit, my liege.”

His jaw seems to tighten as she says this, and she does not break their locked gaze.

Her eyes are the arrowhead.

She rises slowly, all graceful limbs and swishing skirts, glittering her way around the table until she finds her seat. His rage feels like a palpable thing now, bitter and salty from his seat to hers beside him. She feels it landing like droplets of rain on her flesh. It freezes on contact, speckles of black on her porcelain skin. She does not care for his anger or resentment. She has never cared for it.

Honeyed ham, glazed carrots, potato gratin, hazelnut soup, dough fried greens, mulled spicy wine, a massive honeyed cake. She has prepared such a feast for him. He is a king, and what’s more, he is _her_ king. He must be, for she has chosen him. And because she has chosen him, he will have everything. He will have his home, and he will have peace. He will have his heart’s hidden desires, and he will have _her_.

Sansa has become an excellent study of character.


	5. the players and the played

_Bran was rarely truly with them anymore, lost in his mind exploring the stories of men past. Once or twice, she wondered if she could ask him to tell her the truth of her childhood fantasies. Aemon and Nerys, Florian and Jonquil, Bael and Lyarra. She stayed her tongue, though. She had learned in her own way that the tales were never half as sweet as she had imagined. She did not need a reminder that the world she lived in was cruel._

_Even so, there were small pockets of something resembling happiness in this life she was rebuilding for herself. A lemoncake on a quiet afternoon. A walk through the glass houses. Bran’s blue eyes boring into her when she entered his chamber._

_“I am glad you are with us this afternoon,” she said in greeting as she took a seat on the edge of his bed._

_“You’ve come to ask after your sworn shield,” he said, and her heart stopped breaking long ago. Her brother was gone, and she would never make her peace with it, as she would never make her peace with the million hurts she had been made to bear. Like all of the others, she buried it deep._

_“How fares her journey thus far?”_

_“She makes good progress. She and her party have passed the Dragon Queen’s army. I had not imagined that when you said you had a gift for the queen that Cersei would be the one you referred to.”_

_“Am I wrong in assuming the possibility that she will have sent a gift my way as well?” Sansa asked._

_“You are not,” he says. “She sends a mercenary to abduct you. You are to be the hostage she shall use to force Jon’s hand.”_

_Sansa laughed at this, at the idiot of a lioness. “The same wolf can never be caged twice. Who is the mercenary?”_

_“Ser Bronn of the Blackwater. He arrived moons ago, just after the battle. Ser Jaime will know his face.”_

_“If he arrived so long ago, why am I still unharmed?”_

_“He had no orders against you yet. Cersei’s raven will reach him in Wintertown shortly. Within the fortnight.”_

_Sansa’s lips pressed together as they did when she was becoming run away with her thoughts. Cersei continued to live purely because Sansa had much larger problems to contend with in the immediate vicinity. But those problems had temporarily left, one on the back of a horse and the other on the back of a dragon, and she had then to prepare for the minute possibility that Arya may fail in her task. It was unlikely, but ignoring the possibility of failure did not eliminate it entirely. Sansa needed contingencies, and she needed a lemon cake, and she needed a walk in the glass house to clear her head as she fought each battle at once._

_._

She is a lively, elegant thing, all pretty smiles and perfect graces. She sparkles endlessly, charms mercilessly, smolders relentlessly as she moves from table to table. There are eyes on her always, blue eyes and green eyes and brown eyes and gray eyes. Hopeful smiles, blushing cheeks. Men twice her age, ruddy and hairy faced, gruff and utterly ham-handed, reduced to puddles at her feet, shuffling and hiding their smiles behind tankards of ale and ‘ _thank you, Lady Stark_ ’.

His eyes follow her all through the room. She can feel his gaze, a beam of fire pounding against the ice on her skin. Men are all slaves to the things they crave. She lets her hand linger a little too long on Cley Cerwyn’s shoulder, lets her smile for Addam Royce drag on pointlessly. Most of all, however, she lets the tinkle of her breathless laugh mingle with the golden lion seated on her other side. She pretends, and pretends, and pretends, that they are friends. And she pretends, and pretends, and pretends, that she sees nothing else.

When she pardons herself from the evening, only one pair of eyes does not follow her out. She finds her way to her chambers, door unbolted, white jade lockbox on her desk, idly sorting through the scrolls. She unpins her hair, and it falls and falls and falls, a burning tidal wave over her shoulder and back.

The door opens and closes.

“Sansa,” he breathes, voice broken under the force of something he does not know—has never known—so she has learned it for him. She looks up at him and smiles.

“Jon,” she says.

His eyes narrow at her, pink tongue darting out to moisten his lips, and she leans back in her seat with a scroll in her hand.

“You and I are long overdue a conversation,” he says.

He has learned how to manage words since he left. King’s Landing has taught him, as it taught her. But she has so much left to teach him, and she will teach as long as he will allow her to.

“I am in agreement,” she says, stoking the flames once more, watching the water boil over. “Shall we begin now?”

She pours them both goblets of warm, spiced wine. His eyes are dark as he watches her push one towards him. The wolf within sniffs at the air, lips pulling back into a snarl. It has sensed its prey, and the hunt has finally— _finally_ —begun. 

.

_“I recognize you, Ser Bronn of the Blackwater,” Sansa said calmly as she filled a cup of tea. For her guest, she poured a glass of spiced wine. “You were a shadow to my former husband. I see the lions still haven’t quite figured out what to do with you.”_

_Bronn was a rugged thing, all jagged edges and gruff manners. He gulped down the wine and gestured for her to refill his cup, and she obliged. “Why’d ya drag me all the way here, little Lady?” he asked like a man who had already weighed his options for survival and found them sorely lacking. “Why not ask your new one handed friend to kill me soon as you knew what I was up to?”_

_“Do you still have the scroll with Cersei’s order?” Sansa asked._

_“How’d ya even know—?”_

_“Do you still have it?”_

_“I burnt it.”_

_Sansa nodded, sipping her tea. “Do you appreciate the precariousness of your situation, Ser Bronn? I have a kennel full of rabid hounds who ate their last master at my command. Of course, if you wish for a slightly more storied death, there is a direwolf available on the premises. If not either of those, then I could feed you to my new friends amongst the Free Folk—some of their number, I understand it, have developed quite a taste for human flesh. And if none of those tickles your fancy, then perhaps I could simply eat you myself. Tell me, Ser Bronn of the Blackwater—how would you like to die?”_

_Bronn narrowed his eyes, seeming for a moment to consider his options. “Did ya have yer men drag me all the way outta that brothel and bring me here so you could threaten to do something ya could’ve done with less words? Seems a waste of the wine I’ve been drinking, don’t ya agree?”_

_Sansa nodded. “Good. You are not addled with brainrot. So you could be useful to me.”_

_“I’ve no interest in workin for ya. I’ve already got an employer.”_

_“Yes, I noticed. The Lannisters of Casterly Rock. First my oaf of a former husband, then his utter buffoon of a brother, and now his mad hag of a sister. I’d say it’s been about six years to the day since you entered their service, hasn’t it? You must have acquired quite a fortune in all of those years.”_

_Bronn’s eyebrow twitched, as did the corner of his lip. “I’ll have my due, whether they pay it to me or I take it meself.”_

_“I’ve heard that phrase before,” Sansa said, spooning more honey into her teacup. “Not quite the same words, I think. If I change it around, I’ll have a very ironic saying: The Iron Bank will have its due.”_

_“And in this circumstance, I’ll play the Iron Bank. Unless you’ve got a better offer to make me.”_

_“I have a suggestion to make you,” Sansa said. “Do you know what the Iron Bank does to clients who cannot pay off their debts?”_

_“I’ve never been important enough to borrow from them, so I can’t say I do.”_

_The door creaked as it slowly pushed open, and then fell closed again. Sansa smiled at their newest arrival as he stalked, muscles rolling beneath his pure winter coat, around Ser Bronn._

_“Fuck me—” Bronn said quickly as Ghost slinked around to the other side of the desk, resting his head on Sansa’s lap. His breath smelled of the goat she’d ordered for him this morning. She stroked the spot just behind his ear._

_“When the Iron Bank does not receive payment, they invest more money.”_

_“Seems a stupid way to run a bank.”_

_“They don’t invest in the same client, Ser Bronn. They invest in his enemies. Wherever they are, whoever they are, the Iron Bank finds them, and then invest. Eventually, their enemies crumble and fade to dust, and the Iron Bank stands victorious no matter the result. Hence the saying ‘the Iron Bank will have its due’. Don’t you think it a terribly funny way to do business? And yet, the establishment is the most powerful of its kind in the entire known world.”_

_Bronn watched her, eyes greedy and lustful and embittered. “What do ya propose, then?”_

_“I ask only that you, in this instance, act as the metaphorical Iron Bank.”_

_“Invest in you against Cersei Lannister?”_

_“Indeed.”_

_“What would ya have me do?”_

_“Send word to Cersei that you have captured me. Tell her that you will hold me in the Vale until you are paid what you are owed by her. She must be made to understand that in the event of my absence, Lord Wyman Manderly stands as the representative of the North.”_

_“And where will I be holding you for true, if ya don’t mind my asking?”_

_“You will not be holding me anywhere, Ser. I will be holding you.” Sansa set down her teacup and rang the bell on her desk. A moment later, the door opened to reveal Lord Yohn Royce’s younger son Barron. “Escort Ser Bronn to his chambers and see to it that he is treated as a guest.”_

_Bronn seemed to consider his situation for a moment and then nodded, getting to his feet. “Milady,” he said._

_“Ser Bronn?”_

_“Madame?”_

_“I’ll be expecting your first draft tonight. I suggest you get busy.”_

_Bronn’s jaw clicked as he nodded again, this time even going so far as to tip his head into a semblance of a bow, before he left the chamber. Sansa set down her teacup and considered her options. Ser Bronn would cooperate, of course, because he was a cutthroat with nothing to show for it and that makes a man desperate. Men like Ser Bronn were her favorite. Eager enough to lead on by the nose, and too stupid to realize they were being led. But there was an undercurrent of keen understanding in him that gave Sansa the impression that he was aware that he was being moved. And yet he was allowing it to be so purely because his want of riches outweighed the cost of his dignity._

_So much the better, Sansa thought as she took another sip of her tea and stroked Ghost’s fur once more. Once he’d drafted a note to her satisfaction, he’d be dealt with and she could look forward. Perhaps, if she was feeling truly ironic, she could ask Ser Jaime to be the one to fire the crossbow. Money bought a man's silence for a time. A bolt in the heart bought it forever._

_Manderly sewed the discontent within a day and a half, and Sansa had to admit that the speed with which it took root impressed her. Within days, the whispers dogged her every step._

_Within a week, the servants discussed it over shelled peas and laundry._

_Within a fortnight, the lords and ladies approached her for clarification._

_Within a single moon, the axe came down. Word of Cersei’s coercions falling on deaf ears. Word of the Dragon Queen moving forward, heedless of the threats. Word of an irreparable fracture within her council. Calls for her White Wolf’s head echoed through the stone halls. Jon Snow was the most hated man in the North._


	6. a million lies

_**'Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.' - Stephen King** _

Jon is still hovering by the door, fingers on the latch as if he may yet change his mind and run. Sansa lowers the pitcher, eyebrow cocked, face serene as a little dove. Their eyes are locked, brown on blue, and for a fleeting moment Sansa remembers what it was like to be consumed by beauty. Was this the way Daenerys felt when she marched her army north?

Men are not the only ones foolish enough to fall prey to a pretty face.

"It's not too late to run," she says, stoking the flames some more. The wolf snaps its jaws, stalking its foolish prey. "But you are quite good at that, aren't you? It's no matter anymore. I'd prefer that door closed while I change out of this gown. Decide which side of it you want to be on quickly, if you can."

She rises to her feet and sets the wine glass down where he can see it, then makes for her bedchamber on silent feet. She reaches her vanity and pulls the silver gown over her head slowly. She hears the door close as she sets the gown onto the edge of the chair by the window for her handmaid to collect in the morning. The echo of the door closing is a palpable thing, the silence after it like the screech of a step on swollen wood. She sighs as she slips into a silky robe and runs her brush through her hair.

"I didn't run," his voice says suddenly, quietly, from the parlor.

She smiles. Of course he has stayed.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You said I'm good at running," his voice carries. "But I never run from anything. I wanted to. To run. From the Wall when I heard about Uncle, from the North after the Watch betrayed me. I wanted to run. But I didn't."

"No, you didn't," Sansa says, and she heads back into the parlor to find Jon standing by the chair he had been meant to occupy, poking at the fabric of the chair with his thumb. Sansa leans against the door frame, watching him. "You never ran from a battle, or from a challenge, or from duty. Neither of us has ever been particularly good at that, have we?"

Jon is silent for a moment. "Then what do you accuse me of running from?"

"The truth, I suppose," she says, shrugging as she retakes her seat. She gestures to his empty chair, but he does not immediately sit. "Do you know what this is?" Sansa asks, tilting her chin to the box on the desk.

"What is it?" He asks tiredly.

"White jade," she replies, reaching out and running her fingers over the top of the box. "Lord Manderly purchased it for me from a YiTish merchant passing through White Harbor. It's common in that part of the world. Lovely, isn't it? I understand they even wear it as jewelry. We've begun purchasing quite a bit from them. Their jewels in exchange for our furs. They don't have furs quite like ours over there, apparently, though their winters can be extreme, from my understanding."

"So you've made friends of the Far East," Jon says. "Am I to congratulate you?"

"No," Sansa shakes her head. "The _North_ has made friends of the Far East. I have no friends. I have allies, and I have enemies."

Jon's eyes do not leave her own. "That seems an awfully difficult way to live."

Sansa gives him a taunting smile. His pupils dilate in the firelight, and she knows she is devastatingly beautiful. "The cost of living is too high. It is far cheaper for me simply not to die."

Jon looks at her with something akin to sadness, and she buries deep the long forgotten wish that things could have been different.

"You have not come to discuss my philosophy," she says. "You've a head full of words. Let them loose. You are angry with me, this much I can see. What has upset you, cousin?"

"You have," he says instantly. "You are a deceitful woman, Sansa."

"That is quite the accusation. How do you know this?"

"You swore before the heart tree that you would not breathe a soul of my ancestry to anyone. But you did. And you turned this entire kingdom against me."

"I did nothing of the sort," Sansa says delicately.

Jon stares at her in blatant disbelief. "You deny it? You, who had more reason than anyone to want to see her gone—"

"There is where you are wrong," Sansa says, shaking her head. "I was not the only person who knew the truth, Jon. And I certainly was not the person who most wanted to see her claim challenged. That honor belongs to your friend Samwell Tarly."

Jon's face is colored pink and pale with his surprise as he registers this new information. Sansa takes a sip of her spiced wine and sits back, crossing one leg over the other.

“You were ready to abandon the Night’s Watch when you heard what happened to my father,” she says. “So you are intimately acquainted with the lapse in judgement that can accompany a broken heart. I kept my word to you, Jon. I held my silence. But I swore no vow to you that I’d hold the silence of others, and of this I am indeed guilty.”

Jon’s eyes snap up to meet hers. “So you told him to tell everyone?”

“I alerted him to the consequences of revealing such information and allowed him to make his own judgement.”

“But your actions were done with the intention to harm her claim.”

“She had no claim. I have kept my word to you. I have never spoken to a soul about what was said in the Godswood. Remedy your accusation.”

“To what, may I ask?”

“I am not a deceitful woman, Jon. I am a cunning one. If you have come with the intent to lay some shame at my feet, to slather your righteousness upon me until I am a chastened little lamb, then you are to be sorely disappointed. I offer explanations, but no apologies.”

“Explain to me, then,” Jon says, eyes hard and fists clenched. “Explain to me how you could have hoped to change anything for yourself. The North is still allegiant to the Iron Throne. Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed,” Sansa says. “Do you still defend her now? After she showed you the worth of her alliances?”

Jon has the good grace to turn away, face heated in his own hidden shame. “I didn’t think she’d do that,” he says.

“I did,” Sansa says gently. “I appreciate that you are frustrated with me. There’s a great deal that you do not know. I would explain it to you—all of it—but as I said, explanations are all I will offer you. Would you like to know how you came to wear that crown?”

Jon is still glaring at her as he sinks into the chair, a wolf cornered, waiting, _seething_. “Start with your abduction. I know it now to be false.”

“Only the abduction itself was false,” Sansa begins. “When I became aware that Cersei was making moves against me to secure your loyalty to her. I could only hope that you took threats against my person made by _this_ southron queen more seriously than you took the ones made by the woman with actual dragons. I instructed Cersei’s agent to send her a message alerting her to my capture. She did what came naturally to her—threatened violence like a cornered beast. Even Cersei, I imagine, knew the significance of holding me as a hostage. I am no pirate king’s daughter, no snake in the sand. I am a trueborn daughter of a great noble house. My name is respected, and I was representative of the dragon queen’s only remaining political ally in Westeros. Of course, that significance was lost on Daenerys Targaryen, because contrary to what you so diligently parroted during her stay with us, _she is not a good queen_. She ignored the threats and plowed on, much to her detriment—the entire continent was watching. So the entire continent got to see what becomes of her allies, and what they saw was quite telling: the dragon queen uses names and armies as charcoal is used to feed a flame. And when the coal is nothing but ashes, it is cast aside for the wind to carry. Was I wrong about her, in the end?”

Jon is still glaring heartily at her. “No,” he concedes. “But you could have done that without pushing Sam to tell everyone about me.”

“I could have,” she agrees. “Once Daenerys Targaryen showed her hand, Westeros would despise her. But while she could hide behind her false right of claims, no one would challenge her. If people knew there were other options, she would have no choice but to fall in line and behave herself. To win people over the old fashioned way. And what did she do when presented with that situation?”

Jon lowers his gaze to the floor now, eyes shut tight at the memory. Sansa takes another sip of her wine. “She snapped,” Sansa says, lowering the glass. “And tried to burn King’s Landing to the ground. You’d best thank the gods that Lady Brienne was able to deliver my iron scorpion to the city gates in time. All of the ones Cersei was using were made of wood. Before the dragon went down, he all but decimated the Golden Company. But then he died. So Cersei had no army, and Daenerys had no dragon. I let the monsters kill each other. Though I do wish I could have been there when that dragon got shot down. I heard he landed somewhere in Fleabottom, is that true?”

Jon shook his head, a wolf whining in the snow. “Just by Visenya’s Hill. The smallfolk almost got to her.”

“I was once in the middle of a riot in the city streets,” Sansa says. “The commonfolk are a truly unforgiving force. Their perception is malleable, their judgement skewed, but their instinct to hurt—it’s quite a thing.”

“What do you want from me? Do you want to hear that you were right? Is that it? You betrayed my confidence—no matter how cleverly you twist it—and poisoned my entire home against me. Am I to thank you for that?”

“No, you are not,” Sansa says. “I do not need to hear your thanks anymore than I need to hear your acknowledgement in being wrong. I already know that you were wrong—the entire world knows it. I can survive without the approval of a single man. So if you choose still to accuse me of being a deceitful woman, take time to think instead on how much a man must deceive himself to be angry with a woman who saw everything he could not, and who finds grounds to vilify her for having the audacity to be astute enough to act on her theories.”

Jon’s glare is wolfish, still cornered. Frightened beasts lash out. “You’ve always thought yourself smarter than everyone.”

“I am,” she says flatly. “The proof is all around you. It’s in the glass houses, greens growing out of the soil. It’s in the larders filled to burst with food. It’s in the lords and ladies who cannot bear to look at you but to see the shadow of the woman you asked them to yield to. It’s in the crown that I put on your head.”

The White Wolf is momentarily triumphant, thinking itself clever for finding an imagine hole to squeeze through. “And here at last is where you imagine I am indebted to you,” he says.

“Why did you accept it?” she asks, paws stomping the snow, teeth snapping, red fur bristling. His face is colored with shock and a shame she has spent a year studying. “You swore to the lords, you swore to your lover, and you swore to me that you did not covet a crown. And here you sit, with one atop your head. I don’t imagine it’s easy for a man to pretend he has no higher ambitions, when he sits atop a throne twice crowned.”

Jon shakes his head. “The lords, they insisted. To prevent a _war_ —”

“And that is a fine excuse,” she says. “As noble as any to make such a bold sacrifice. To protect the realm from war, you take up your father’s crown. Voila! Aegon Targaryen, the dragon and the wolf.”

“I didn’t have a choice—”

“You had _every_ choice. And just as Cersei and Daenerys before you, you did what came naturally. It’s a long walk from bastardy to the Iron Throne.”

Jon’s eyes flicker in her direction briefly, hackles lowered, snout bend towards the snow. “You don’t understand. I’m not like you. I’m not chasing crowns or titles.”

“No? Are you sure? Because here I am, nothing more than the Lady of a castle, seated before the king of seven realms. Which of us is truly the ambitious one?”

Jon glared at her, up on his feet and pacing before the fire. “You don’t want the Iron Throne,” he mutters almost to himself. “You don’t. You only got yourself tangled up in politics again when I brought her to Winterfell.”

“I was always tangled up in politics, Jon,” Sansa reminds him. “And you are correct, I have no designs upon the Iron Throne. My interests do not extend beyond the welfare of my people and my borders. The rest of it can hang.”

“That’s cruel.”

“A sound leader protects their own before anyone else,” Sansa says. “I have never pretended to be a heroine from a song. I am not some Breaker of Chains, some great conqueror. I am a Lady of a castle, and the mistress of this domain. Am I cruel for knowing my boundaries and sticking to them? Perhaps. The argument could be made that it is a great deal crueler to impose myself upon others who may not be welcoming to my rule simply because I believe I’d be good for them. But I imagine you’ve never entertained such an argument.”

“And back again to this,” Jon chuckles bitterly. “Are you certain, Sansa, that you do not wish to hear me acknowledge your _clearly_ superior foresight—”

“You placed this kingdom in my hands,” Sansa says. “With no indication that you’d ever return. With enemies surrounding us. You returned asking me to bend over to the whims of a stranger whom you had given the reins to my safety. A woman you foolishly believed you could understand. A woman who gave you no reason to believe would share your concern for your family, who has demonstrated no loyalty to them while she demanded their undying allegiance. A woman who saw a new enemy wherever she did not receive immediate worship. And you were somehow _surprised_ when I moved against her? When so many others were eager to do the same? We stopped being allies when you stopped treating me like one, and mayhap in that your queen is guiltless, because you were a disrespectful, demeaning little cunt long before you left for Dragonstone. I do not want your acknowledgement in anything pertaining to crowns or thrones or the role I played in giving you both of them. That you are still willing to hide behind your tattered honor does not make your betrayal holier than mine.”

Jon’s stare goes from righteous fury, to bitterness, to hurt, to resignation. Sansa gestures to the box again. “Take a look inside, Jon,” she says softly, holding open the lid.

He shakes his head. The wolf is meandering through the snow, exhausted, lost, sniffing the air for some secret sanctuary.

“I will not atone for my actions,” she says. “And still, you seem to be angrier with me than you were with Sam for the role he played in exposing your truth. And Lord Manderly as well, for that matter. I was only one part of a machine, and it took a large machine to engineer this. Why is your anger towards me stronger than it is for the others who played their part? Samwell Tarly, Wyman Manderly, Tyrion Lannister, even Davos Seaworth, to some extent, for spearheading the campaign to exile Daenerys Targaryen from Westeros. For expelling her back to Essos to continue her legendary failure in Slaver’s Bay. For how hard he pushed the southron lords to throw their lot in with your claim. And still he sits in your southron solar as one of your principal advisors. Why are they pardoned for their betrayals while I am burnt at the stake for mine? Why do you call them friends to this day, when I am dubbed a ‘deceitful woman’? Have you never stopped to ask yourself this past year you’ve spent cursing my name?”

Jon’s eyes rise, wide and hurt, and she is reminded distantly of puppies.

She taps the box with a finger idly. “The answer is here, within this box.”

Jon’s eyes linger on the jade, following the tip of her finger as she drags it along the rim. He presses his mouth into a thin line, and gets to his feet. Before she can get another sip of wine down her throat, he has quit the chamber, the door swinging behind him.

She smiles to herself as she spits the wine back into the glass and pushes the pitcher away. Her fingers tap at the lid, pushing the box shut. He will return. Not tonight—there has been too much said. But the wolf has caught its prey, white fur between its teeth. A single secret needs a million lies to build the walls it hides behind. How many bricks have they torn down tonight? She cannot count. But Jon will return, pot boiling over as it is, and tear the rest down himself. This she knows, for she has become an excellent study of character.


	7. reprieve (until it isn't)

**_'I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe, I told it not, my wrath did grow.' - William Blake_ **

.

Jon is seated on the end of the table guaranteed to put him far, far away from her in the morning. This might have been effective if she had attended breakfast. Instead, she takes the morning meal in her brother’s chambers, and he graciously informs her before his eyes go milky and she is left wretchedly alone. Bran’s presence is a balm. There is no pretense with him. She needs not study his character.

 _When you know what a man wants, you know how to move him_.

Bran wants nothing. It is a breath of free air and a desolate storm at once. But Sansa has learned by heavy hands and bitter tears to turn her back on the battles she cannot win. She cannot fight for her brother. All she can do is hold on to whatever little is left of him.

There is much to be done today. She must draft a letter to the wealthy Nuhir family of Myr, securing shiploads of lush fabrics and spices in exchange for lumber and wool. They prefer softwoods, the Myrish, to decorate their homes. Whittled items are highly prized to them, for all that they are so common they’re nearly worthless here. Sansa wonders how the Dragon Queen imagines her cities to be faring, shut up in her pyramid in Meereen. Last Sansa cared to check, the infrastructure was still in shambles. There’s little Sansa can do, and far less that she is inclined to do. She meant what she said in her chambers yesterday. She has no business dragging her kingdom—just beginning to taste hard won peace and prosperity—into the wreck of another nation’s misery. There is only so much she can do. She is no grand queen, no glorified savior. She is only one lady.

Jon’s secret, she has said before, developed in her absence. With only the ghost of her there in his mind, it filled in all of the spaces—molded exactly as he’d likely imagined. She is accustomed to this, to having men deal with a desired image of her, and being woefully disappointed with the cold reality of her nature. But she is a winter wolf, all snapping jaws and sharp teeth, red fur and cold eyes. Now and again, she may don the guise of a sheep. But all the deadliest wolves always do.

The water has been bubbling over since last night, since Jon stormed out of her chambers. A thundercloud sits atop his head, she can feel it all the way here in the warmth and relative solitude of her brother’s chambers. His secret blossomed in her absence—and his anger doubly so. Jon has always been hardened by fury.

Angry beasts are not to be feared, because anger is a wild thing. Like fire, it grows and consumes. Without a steady hand, it takes on a life of its own. Anger cannot be controlled. It burns and burns, rages and rages, until splashes of water, until shards of ice, are fed to it instead.

She smiles at her brother as she kisses his cheeks. He is still not with her, eyes milky and glazed, but even this is a comfort. She leaves his chambers quietly, a pillar of black and gray and red, a wolf stalking through the snow to the safety of its den. As soon as the door is closed behind her, her eyes find the jade box. She tips it open and pulls out one scroll after another, laying them out in the order they arrived in. Some were delivered to her directly from the hands of messengers still atop their breathless horses. Some placed into her hands by sly smiled ambassadors. Some were not meant to ever been seen by her, stolen by a Three Eyed Raven from the rookeries of distant castles and placed in her hands with a caw of ‘ _corn’_ , or ‘ _queen’_. All assembled in order, broken seals facing upright, waxes of blue and green and black and gold and red. All evidence she has used, all whetstones made to sharpen the sword. She reads them all, one by one, and then rolls them up again, tucking them away and closing the box again. Jon may keep his tattered honor. She will keep everything else.

After she has drafted the Nuhir letter, she takes a brief walk along the balcony overlooking the courtyard. Jon’s inky head is visible even from here, sword clanging against one of his Kingsguard. She can scarcely see his face, and yet she knows the instant he has seen her. She does not bother to hold his gaze. She can feel his wrath from where she is standing.

It is truly so thin a line he has walked these years.

She does not know if he has skipped luncheon, only that she has. There is still much to be done, even with the letter sealed and handed to Maester Wolkan. She pushes wounded white wolves to the furthest reaches of her mind as she focuses herself on the Book of Coin, the schematics for a potential guard tower just north of Moat Caillin, and Lord Cerwyn’s request to meet with her to speak of trading barley for rye and rye for cornmeal and it’s all a hideous jumble in her mind. All she knows for certain is that Cley Cerwyn asks for no meeting that cannot be settled within written correspondence, but secretly wishes to have another go at winning the heart of the Lady of Winterfell. Perhaps if she were stupider, it might have worked. Stupid women are the only ones who are ever truly happy, in the end. As long as they’re stupid enough, and remain stupid enough, not to recognize the spinning circle of acute misery that being born female truly entails, then they are all a happy bunch. Sansa was once one of those women. She has not prayed in many years, yet she prays for the ones who are born clever, and prays harder still for the ones who are—like her—born stupid, and have the sense beaten into them.

It is well past sunset when she emerges from her chambers at last. She only remains indoors as long as it takes to get herself down to the kitchen to steal of loaf of bread and then makes the trek to the Godswood. Ghost walks mutely beside her, settling himself at her feet as she takes her seat beside the tree. She tears the bread and swallows it chunk by chunk, savoring the soft cheese baked into the center. The weirwood bleeds silently, and Ghost breathes silently, and she feasts silently, sating one hunger while waiting, ever patient, to sate the other. She rises from her seat once she has finished the bread, and Ghost follows her back into the castle. When she enters her chamber, it is on a silent step. She smirks. The jade box is open, scrolls spilled out onto the desk, one even rolled onto the floor. Jon sits, a wolf with one paw in the bear trap, in her seat behind the desk, a scroll unfurled in his sword-worn hand. He raises his eyes at her arrival, and his gaze—iron hot, bitter as winter’s bite—bores into her skin.

“What is this?” he asks stubbornly.

Forged from fury. Hardened by fury. Driven by fury. It is truly so thin a line he has walked these years.


	8. hardened by pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know I was a horrible tease last chapter, and that was not intentional. This was all one long ass chapter originally, except I didn't like the conversation here so I split them until I was done editing and posted what I had in the last chapter because I knew people were counting on me to keep updating daily. It was short, the last chapter, but I think I've made up for it with this one.

**_‘Hold to a thing long enough, a secret, a desire, maybe a lie, and it will shape you.’ – Mark Lawrence_ **

.

Sansa watches him watch her, stares a hot and hurried blush of something...something...and closes the door behind her. As an extra measure, she bolts it shut behind her. He will not run from this conversation so easily, and this truth he has spent too long trying to outrun.

Jon Snow will never disappoint her again.

"Those are scrolls," she replies, honey sweet and silk spun. She sinks into the seat before the desk, shoulders back, chin high, feet together. The picture of a perfect lady.

Jon glares at her drily for a moment before his eyes greedily take in the words written on the scroll. "This is a marriage proposal," he mutters darkly. "From Sunspear."

"Indeed it is," Sansa says. "And that one is from the Vale. That one there is from Braavos, it you'll believe it. And that one is all the way from Leng."

Jon's eyes darken over the scrolls as she points them out. She does not bother hiding her smile. He seems to clock it, though he does not react to it, focused as he is on his perusal of her collection. He growls, brows knitting, eyes slits of black. He drops the Sunspear scroll, taking up the one from the Riverlands.

"Deacon Whent?"

"My grandmother was a Whent," she says conversationally. "Many would believe it to be a suitable match. A smart one, even. Strengthens our ties to the Riverlands." Jon bristles at this news, lifting his gaze to meet hers. The sky is darkening outside, and she relaxes in her seat. "Are you unsettled by this information, Jon?" she asks.

"No," is his instant answer.

She clicks her tongue, _tut tutting_ as she reaches up to undo the pins in her hair. Jon's eyes watch as the tresses fall wavy and soft around her shoulders. "I think lies have dealt enough damage to us both, don't you agree? There is nothing in that box that is untrue. And this chamber is not a haven for dishonesty. If you have come to seek answers, then you must answer me honestly. I ask again: are you unsettled by this information, Jon?"

"No," he answers again—and to the man's credit, he does sound slightly calmer now. Almost as if he has begun to learn how to tell a lie. If Sansa did not have an entire box full of proof that he is a massive fraud, she might have believed him. She might have slinked away to lick the wounds of her humiliation. He might have been triumphant. As it is, Sansa cannot fathom a world where Jon Snow of all people possesses more political savvy than she does. Just as the wolf is deadlier than the sheep. Not arrogance, but simple fact.

She leans forward and picks up the scroll that has rolled to the floor. He must not have seen it when he tipped the box over, elsewise he'd have recognized it. He would know it anywhere, she is sure. It is one written in his own hand, after all.

"These are all dated from earlier this year," Jon says. "I take it to mean that you no longer entertain suitors."

Sansa laughs lightly at this, blood flowing warm with the air of the firelight. The white wolf is numbed by the cold of the wild winter around him, so numb that he cannot feel the sting of the trap gripping his paw. The red wolf shoots like an arrow through the snow, the scent of blood, warm and rich and oozing, calling like a summer bird on a bright morning.

"My suitors in Westeros seem to have decided on their own time that there were better flowers to pluck than the Lady of Winterfell," she says with mock solemnity, but it doesn't last for a single moment as she laughs again, lighter than before, lighter than she's laughed in years. The red wolf has found him, a great white beast bleeding in the snow, so numb to reality he doesn't even see it. "Though I suppose I have you to thank for that."

Jon lifts his eyes to meet hers. "Pardon?"

"Was it not by your own order, Jon, that the lords of Westeros ceased their attempts to secure my hand?"

Jon lowers the scroll from the Whents and it lands softly between a scroll from the Vale and another from the Reach. "What do you mean?" he asks, the picture of a perfect idiot.

Sansa crosses one leg over the other, still clutching her evidence in her hand. Jon is so focused on her, so focused on the numb, that he does not notice it clutched in her fingers.

"You heard whispers in the Red Keep, surely, that lords were recommending the suits of their heirs—or themselves in such cases as that of my cousin Sweetrobyn—and you quietly ordered them to stay away."

"That is untrue," he says, shaking his head weakly. "I did no such thing."

Sansa raises a brow. "Are you certain?"

"I am," he says.

She nods slowly, teeth bared, growl of satisfaction caught in her throat. The white wolf stiffens, sniffing at the air, only just beginning to sense a threat.

Red lunges forward, no warning, no escape, teeth tearing into his throat.

She places the scroll in her hand onto the desktop softly, using a single finger to push it toward him. His eyes follow it as it nears him, and it takes a single moment before his face begins to drain of color as recognition dawns on him.

"This chamber is not a haven for dishonesty," she says again, voice only a whisper as the white wolf's blood drips from her lips. "Deny it once more, Jon. There it is, written in your own hand, to the Lord of Casterly Rock, informing him that Winterfell's mistress will not be entertaining suitors from the Westerlands, or anywhere else."

Jon can only stare at it. "How did you come by this?" he asks.

"Jaime Lannister was kind enough to send it to me upon receiving it," she says. "His new bride was yet my sworn shield during those days, and he felt it incumbent upon himself to inform me in case I was unaware. My cousin Sweetrobyn claims to have received a similar one."

Jon shifts his gaze to the scroll she gestures to with a loose practice, and his eyes flutter as he leans back in the chair. His breath is jagged and slow, his face one of slow growing defeat as his fingers release the scroll in his hands, and it falls to the ground with a light _'tap'_.

"I didn't think you wanted to be marrying again," he says.

She laughs again. It stuns her, really, how much she's been doing that lately. "A very clever way of saying that you did not want me to marry anyone at all."

"It wasn't about what I wanted—"

"Every step you've taken since you left the Wall has been in the name of what you wanted," Sansa says. "This chamber is not a haven for dishonesty."

"What would you like to hear me say?" he asks.

"I will not tell you," Sansa says.

"Then do not toy with me. Do not bring my integrity into question to solve your pretty puzzles."

"So here at last is the line you will not cross," Sansa says with a smile. "Your integrity is beyond all reproach, but mine is to be probed and doubted with every waking breath, is this not your preferred way of doing things?"

"I have given you a kingdom, is that not what you wanted?"

"And I have given you _seven_ ," Sansa says. "Nothing you have accomplished for yourself holds a _candle_ to what I have accomplished in your name. I would weigh my integrity against yours in a heartbeat, and I sleep much sounder than you ever will because of it. This chamber is not a haven for dishonesty."

"You were right," Jon says at last, eyes wild, fear gripping him like a vice as he gets to his feet. Sansa falls silent for a moment. "You were right," he says again, quiet and tired. "You were right about her. About Cersei. About Ramsay. All of it...you were right."

If Sansa was a lesser woman, she'd have claimed this as a victory. She'd have rejoiced in the acknowledgement. She'd have reveled in it.

The wolf is not a lesser beast, and Sansa is not a lesser woman.

"Did I not tell you before, Jon," she says slowly. "That I do not need your seal of approval to sleep at night? What it is to me if you own that I was right? This is weathered news."

"Then what are you doing?" He asks. "What is your design in showing me this?"

"I mean to provide you with an answer," Sansa says. "But you must first find the question. Why did you command the lords to cease their applications for my hand?"

"Because I know what Ramsay did to you and I thought you deserved better than to be married off again for your name or for a castle."

"Let us rephrase the question: why did it matter to you that I not be married? Your scrolls did not ask for a temporary cease, it commanded—without negotiation—a permanent one. You had no intention of ever allowing a suitor to come North. Why?"

"Because I accounted for the possibility that you would never wish to marry again."

"I am the mistress of Winterfell, and Lady Paramount of the North. I must marry and provide Stark heirs. This is inevitable."

"Aye, and this then would be of your own choosing. On your own time."

"Of my own choosing...very careful words. And quite pointless as well, when one considers how you—with a few well placed scrolls—vanished those choices from my periphery."

"I did it for you," he says. "I hadn’t thought it would come out sounding so permanent. You know I'm no good with words."

"Oh no, Jon," Sansa shakes her head. "Words, you have always been good with. You've trained your entire life to say the right words, please the right people. Ever since you were nothing but the bastard of the Warden of the North. Hiding in the shadows, sulking in corners. Watching children play. Watching a mother love her little wolf pups. That's what you wanted the most then. It's what you've always wanted. Love. But that was given only in small doses. Just enough, but not enough at all. You wanted more. You still do."

Jon's glare is disgusted as he sinks into the chair again. "Is this what you've been doing with your time?" He asks. "Lying awake at night, pondering my childhood?"

Sansa smiles. "I've become quite the study of character," she says. "Your body has grown, King Aegon, but no matter what you do, or what you say—no matter how many monsters you slay—you will always be Jon Snow. The rest of the world has forgotten this, but you never will, and maybe that is worse."

"I know exactly who I am," he says. "I know I am a bastard. No matter who sired me or if they wed or not. I know this. You cannot use it against me."

"I don't need to," Sansa says. "You do enough of that on your own."

"What is the point of all of this?"

"Ask the right question, Jon, and I will give you the right answer," she says. "But if I screamed it into your ear until morning, I could not force you to accept it. This you must do on your own. So let us find the right question. Why did you, bastard born and bastard bred, turn away my suitors? You, who knows from experience what it means to word pleasantries from a lifetime of appeasing vindictive and prejudiced hearts like my mother? Why did you turn them away?"

Jon shakes his head. "It was a mistake," he says.

She watches him. "No, it was not."

Jon sighs, and it sounds as though his chest carries ten times its weight. "No," he concedes. "It was not."

"Why was it done, then?" she asks.

"I thought you might want to go the Mormont route," he says. "Have a child with whoever you wanted, and I'd legitimize them for you."

Sansa shakes her head as she listens, but he is leaning forward, elbows on his knees, head bent facing the ground. He does not see her face. Perhaps this makes it easier for him.

"No, you did not," she says softly. "You knew I would not do this."

"No one thinks they'll do something until they do it," Jon says quietly.

"That is true," Sansa agrees. "But not here. Tell me why you turned away my suitors, Jon."

Jon sighs again, bleeding out into the snow, whimpering into the dark. "Because I didn't want you to marry any of them."

The wolf's teeth snap shut, seated in the snow beside its wounded mate. "Why not, Jon?"

"Because I didn't want it."

"Why did you not want it?" she asks.

He shakes his head. "I don't know."

Sansa's eyes dart over the scrolls. She selects two that he has not looked at and hands them to him. He looks up at her urging, and takes them both. Unrolling the first one, he raises a tired brow. "The Avarris family?"

"They've the one son," Sansa says. "Only one. But I've heard it said that he's prettier than I am, if that's possible. And the Avarris family has a long standing friendship with the Iron Bank. They're the cream of Braavosi society. The son they recommend to me—if I choose to accept him—will be appointed as the Braavosi ambassador to the North."

Jon shakes his head. "I've banned suitors to come for your hand," he says.

"As is your right. You are the king." Sansa says. "But there are boundaries to your domain, and they end with the Narrow Sea. Leon Avarris is a son of the mightiest family of the mightiest of the Free Cities. He is beyond your jurisdiction."

Jon's eyes dart to the top of the scroll. "This letter is dated two months ago," he says.

"It is," Sansa nods. "Because his family is serious about the match, and they do not answer to you. If I choose to proceed, Leon Avarris will arrive in White Harbor by the end of the year."

"I will not have this," Jon says, flinging the scroll aside. "I will not. He will not marry you. He will not make it here to Winterfell."

"On what authority do you threaten a foreign ambassador?"

"I am the king," he hisses at her.

"Awfully good thing I put that crown on your head, is it not?" She asks. "As it is, I fail to see how you intend to mend anything in this way. What will you do? Take him as a hostage? Kill him the moment he sets foot on our shores? His family will rise against you, along with all of their deadliest allies—including the Iron Bank. And the Iron Bank will rise with all of their allies. You would plunge the continent into war with the entire known world."

Jon draws in a sharp breath, caught with his paw in the bear trap, jaw clenching, hands bunched into fists.

Heedless of his turmoil, Sansa takes the second scroll from his hand and taps the box with it.

"The jade used to make this box came from a mine owned by a man called Twa Minh," she says. "This is his correspondence right here," she adds, waving the scroll. "He's royal by blood on his mother's side, but distantly. He's focused himself on making the most of his family's connections and built himself a vast financial empire on luxury goods. Jewels and such. He took a keen interest in the furs available in the North. We've been communicating extensively over the past year. He is staying in Pentos for the moment, but the promise of meeting, and possibly courting, the Lady of Winterfell might induce him to make the trip across the Narrow Sea. Will you slaughter him as well? I fear we'd have the same result. And worse still—Twa Minh is an established trade partner. Westeros would never be able to make an ally again if word got out that the king murders his trade partners. It might make some wonder just how much of your aunt you have in you."

Jon's glare is fierce, but wounded beasts are always so. "You will refuse them," he says. "Both of them. I have no command over them, but I do over _you_. You are my subject. You are forbidden to accept either of them."

Sansa smiles. "You are the king, and what you command, I will obey."

Jon's mouth is a thin line, nostrils flared as he breathes deeply through his nose. He nods once, pleased with her answer, and gets to his feet.

"Of course," Sansa begins as he makes for the door. "This would not be the first time you have attempted to make a demand of me. I imagine it'll work out as well as the others before it did."

She smiles to herself when she hears his footsteps stop abruptly by the door.

"Sansa," he says darkly. "Do not test me."

"You've been testing me for years," she says, not even turning in her seat. "As far as I care, turnabout seems perfectly reasonable."

A moment of silence, and then the thunder of approaching footsteps stops abruptly as Jon circles around the desk, pulling the chair until it is right before her. He sinks into it, face a foot away from her own. She's having the time of her life.

"Listen to me very carefully," he says. She nods. "You are to write to these pompous windbags first thing in the morning. You are to inform them that you are not entertaining suitors now, or at any other time. You are to inform them that you will not be negotiating this point. You will not leave any vague hints that this is untrue. You will not ask anyone else to arrange for this to seem debatable. You will not marry anyone else."

"Anyone else but whom?" she asks, a thrill shooting through her veins. So this is what it is, for a man to want to the brink of madness. So this is what it is to be fought for.

Jon falters, blinking rapidly as he realizes his blunder. "I—"

"Anyone else but whom, Jon Snow?" she asks again.

He shakes his head, leaning away. But Sansa cannot have this, so close to realizing his long buried truth as he is. She grips the edges of his doublet and yanks him towards her roughly, until his face is inches from her. " _Who_ , Jon?"

He is a wild, wounded beast. Beaten down by years of want and wanting, molded into a sacrificial lamb, so used to having nothing that he does not know how to want anything.

Caught in a constant war between wanting the world but believing he has no right to a single thing on it.

She's become an excellent study of character.

“Why did you send away my suitors, Jon Snow?”

"I don't know," he chokes out, eyes darting to her hair, her neck, her cheeks—her lips.

She purses them softly, puckered and soft and fine as they are, and spares him a devastating smile. "Yes, you do."

She presses forward swiftly, but for all of her speed in reaching him, her kiss to his lips is such a delicate thing. His arms circle her instantly and she shifts closer, mouths moving in synchronization, open and hungry and soft and aching. She feeds this long unsated second hunger slowly, soft hands pressing to the sides of Jon's face, swallowing his breaths of satisfaction.

When she pulls back, he follows her blindly, lips pressing to hers again, devouring any words she might have to say. She has very few left, and only one real question. And she will not leave him be until he answers it. So when she pulls back a second time, it is with conviction.

"Anyone else but whom, Jon Snow?"

Jon's face is flushed from her kisses, plump lips swollen and red, cheeks pink, eyes cloudy with want and swimming with tears. "Me," he breaths at last. "Anyone else but me." She wipes at his tears as he blinks, soothing away the ache in his head and his heart from the years he's spent keeping it all to himself. "I didn't want you to be with anyone else."

Sansa nods. "I know, Jon."

“But you’re my _sister_ —” he weeps harder.

“There are greater sins to be committed by man than to love a woman who was once his sister,” Sansa says. “Cast your shame aside. You’ve done nothing wrong in loving me as you do.”

“What would she say—” he groans, choking on his tears.

Sansa knows instantly who _she_ is. “My mother cannot say anything,” Sansa tells him. “Because she is dead. I am your cousin, Jon. You’ve done far worse things than love me.”

He weeps on, shaking so violently she half fears he may fall from the chair.

"Please don't marry them, Sansa," he pleads into his hands as he buries his face in them. " _Please_ don't marry them."

Sansa gets to her feet and collects a handkerchief from her desk. "I won't, Jon," she says as she retakes her seat and waits for him to move his hands.

"I don't believe you," he shakes his head, voice thick as his shoulders shake. "I don't believe it. Promise me—no, you'll just break that, too."

"I won't, Jon," she says. "I would have married one of them by now if I meant to. I won't. Believe that, if you'll believe nothing else."

“Don’t hate me, Sansa,” he begs. “I swear I never wanted to—”

“No one wants to love their sister, Jon,” Sansa says. “We don’t get to choose who we love, hard as you tried.”

Jon only cries harder. She shifts now, lifting his elbows from his knees so that she may sit upon his lap. His tears drop onto her skin. She wraps her arms around his neck, running her fingers through his hair, holding him close so he can hear her heartbeats. They sit there, red and white in the winter, lies seeping out like blood cutting through the fresh snow. The fire grows weak beside them. The night is still young, and there is much left to be discussed between them before the sunlight claims the sky.

Jon's secret had not been difficult to guess, once she kept her mind open. She knows the look of a man who wants her. A man who craves her, who drinks her in when she's in the room and won't stray from the hem of her skirts when she's near. He wants her. But he's swallowed it deep—deep where it won't haunt him. Deep where all of the other unspoken desires that plague his dreams can't hurt him when he's awake. Men are all slaves to the things they want, Sansa has learned. Whether they be pig farmers of golden kings, men are all slaves to what they crave.


	9. the wounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I think now would be a good time to point out that I am an academic at heart, and one of the subjects that I've studied is psychology. Jon's psyche has always been really interesting for the same reasons that people with unstable childhoods are always interesting. I've always wanted to explore a situation where Jon's psychology is properly evaluated, and the damage of his childhood is actually reflected on. With that said, you can read this story as if Sansa is Jon's therapist, diagnosing and treating him with about twenty years of much needed therapy. Though we see it through her point of view, this story is in fact about the both of them, so while it would be fun to see like 18+ chapters of Jon getting shat all over for his baffling stupidity, it is more about the devastating healing process accompanying a lot of buried pain. Moral of the story: Sansa is really fucking good at reading people.   
> Also: this story is not just about her helping Jon. If you think I've forgotten the girl, think again.

**_‘The wound is the place where the light enters you.' - Rumi  
_ **

.

Sansa places a warm glass of mulled wine into Jon’s trembling hands and stands over him as he takes one shaky sip after another. He does not yet dare meet her eyes, still wracked with shame as he is over his hidden truth. Sansa will give him time—all the time he needs—to purge himself of this shame. She understands it. Who would give their heart to one they believed to share a father with and not feel some modicum of corruption in their blood? They are not Lannisters. They are wolves and dragons and silver trout.

And yet here he sits, the dragon and the wolf, the son of ice and fire, in love with his sister.

Jon sniffles. “When did you decide to do it?” he asks. “To tell everyone. Did you do it right away?”

Sansa is silent for a moment. Jon’s arm tightens around her waist. “Jon—”

“Tell me,” he says. “I know what happened. But tell me…tell me how you did it all.”

Sansa sighs. “I began making plans when your raven arrived. The first raven. Telling me that you’d bent the knee. I know what it’s like to be a prisoner in the south, so I thought we still had an ally in you. I knew I didn’t trust her the moment I met her. But I didn’t quite know that I hated her until that war meeting. And that was when I decided—any way that she could be removed from power in the North, I would do it. It felt as if perhaps the Gods had not given up on me after all—less than an hour later, you dropped that secret of yours into my lap. And there it was. The means to make it all go away. I had my gambit, I had my plans, and I had my certainty. Bear in mind, Jon, before you pass judgement upon me, that if she truly were a good queen, nothing would have played out as it had. If she truly were a good queen, she would not have ignored Cersei’s threats against me. She would not have demanded our armies march south so soon after battling the dead. She would not have destroyed the entire harvest at the Reach. She would not have attempted to burn King’s Landing to the ground. And she would most certainly not have taken you as a hostage. If she were a good queen, her council would not have turned against her once they learned the truth about you. If she were a good queen, the revelation of this secret would have meant nothing. It would have changed nothing. You would have been encouraged by her council to refuse the throne, instead of encouraged to claim it. She knew this—that is why she asked you not to tell anyone. And it is especially why she asked you not to tell _me_.”

Jon is still not meeting her eyes. She pulls the leather loose and runs her fingers through his curls soothingly. He does not say anything, but he leans into her touch with a tired groan.

“Do you hear me, Jon?” she asks. “Are you understanding what I am telling you?”

Jon sighs, a stone’s weight in a single breath, and nods slowly.

“I did not know what would happen next, once the truth was out,” Sansa says. “I did not know what she would do in the south, nor did I care. My concern was with the North. And every sign pointed to your having abandoned any fight for its freedom. It fell upon me to secure our sovereignty. I told you once, Jon, that I wanted you to fight this battle with me. And I told you as well that I would do it myself if I had to. Daenerys Targaryen is dangerous as long as she has a dragon. The beasts were the wind in her sails. No one has a true claim to that throne. All monarchy can be challenged somehow. But while she could hide behind dragons and her claim, everyone would overlook her other atrocities. I sent Cersei the iron scorpion to be used at her discretion. That I knew Cersei had no discretion was to my own benefit—everyone ignored my every attempt to warn them about her before. There are only so many times I can urge people to pay attention before I can shout no longer. Cersei did what she always did—take the violent path—and the least I can say in her favor is that her men managed to take down the dragon before Arya tore out her throat with that odd contraption she found in the torture vaults beneath the Keep.”

Finally, _finally_ , Jon speaks. “Did Arya know what you were doing?”

Sansa shrugs. “She had her suspicions,” she says. “You may ask her yourself when she returns from her travels.”

Jon sighs again. “How did you know they’d crown me? How could you be sure they wouldn’t crown someone else?”

Sansa smiles. “I didn’t,” she says. “You had been parroting over and over that you did not want it. I was certain that with Cersei dead and Daenerys universally hated as she was that I would visit Bran in his chambers one day and he’d tell me that some Dornish Prince had laid claim or something. Imagine my surprise when I heard instead that it was you. This, I did not account for. But you are not angry with me for removing the obstacles in your path to the throne, Jon. You wanted it.”

Jon shakes his head. Sansa moves from his lap and retakes her seat beside him. “I did not. I told you I did not.”

Sansa takes a sip of her own wine now, savoring the spicy cinnamon as it swirled down her throat. “This chamber is not a haven for dishonesty.”

Jon begins to shake again. “I wanted it,” he says quietly.

“I know, Jon,” she says. “And that is nothing to be ashamed of.” She means it, because the boy who never had anything a day in his life ought to hear that he is not wrong for wanting something—even something he does not know how to want. “Listen to me well, Jon.” She leans forward and takes his face in her hands, lifting it so he is watching her, eyes huge and wet, lost and overwhelmed. “ _Listen to me_. Catelyn Stark was a vindictive woman. Spiteful and cruel to treat a child that way. Her anger was meant for my father, yet another Stark who has wronged you not by denying you the truth of your lineage, but by fostering these notions of honor in your mind—in all of our minds—and teaching us to believe that this is the way the world works. They are my family, and I love them endlessly, and I miss them every day. But they were both of them wrong. Honor is not a badge of merit we wear to show the world that we are better men, better women. Honor is not what gods will judge us by. I have watched men kill and rape and brutalize in the name of honor. I speak for true when I tell you it is meaningless. Your honor is a tarnished thing, stained with every vow you have forsaken to take up another, with every man whose blood stained your sword, with every wife you have widowed, every child you have orphaned, every kingdom you now call your own. Honor is not a single code of conduct that is meant to apply to every man—because in this cruel world of ours, not every man is given the chance to uphold it. Honor is a principle we choose to live by—the laws we use not to govern each other, but to govern ourselves. If the gods are true, they will judge us by this—but the gods do not have codes of honor. That is an invention of man. And man has no place judging other man, for none of us— _not a single one—_ is innocent.”

Jon’s turmoil is a tangible force, tasting of bitterness and sorrow, and he breaks in her arms. She holds him until the sun crests the horizon, until the birds begin to sing and the sky begins to lighten. And then she holds him more.

“I wanted it,” he says quietly. “I’ve always wanted it.”

“My mother is gone, Jon,” she says soothingly into his ear. “She cannot judge you anymore. Bury your dead. I know that I have. Bury your dead, and look forward. You still have yet to live.”

Jon shudders and quakes in her embrace, tears bitter and miserable, pain seeping through the fur of the paw caught in the bear trap. The white wolf trembles in his mate’s grip, a fearsome creature laid bare at last—secrets and lies and the thousand wounds they carried with them pouring out. He tips his head back to the icy winter gale to the moon watching ominously above, and he _howls_.

“You are only human, Jon,” she whispers into his ear. “You are allowed to want.”

“I didn’t love her,” he says quietly.

“I know.”

“She was there. So different…” _from you_.

“I know.”

“It would have been so much easier.”

“It might have, had you loved her.

“I didn’t mean to treat you so coldly.”

“Yes, you did,” Sansa says, and this, she can laugh at. “You wanted me in the shadows. Not belonging. Out in the cold in a place that should have been home. You can say that you didn’t. But you did. A small part of you wanted me to understand what that felt like.”

“I told you I forgave you for that.”

“You said you did, but you didn’t. Not for true. I teased that forgiveness out of you. You didn’t mean it.”

“I mean it now,” he says.

“I know you do.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“For that? I do,” Sansa says.

“And for everything else?” he asks.

Sansa shakes her head. “This chamber is not a haven for dishonesty,” she says. “I will not lie to you. I am still upset by it. But it does not sting as it did before. There is much to be set to rights. Perhaps once that is righted again, I may move forward.”

Jon nods slowly, wiping at his tear-stained cheeks. His eyes find the window. “I’ve kept you up all night.”

“It’s alright,” she says. “Go to bed, King Aegon.” 

At the words _go to bed_ , Jon looks at her, eyes almost wide for a moment. Sansa knows that he sees her mother, the shadow that has haunted him for so many years, and it pains her that someone so precious to her memory could be the monster in someone else’s story. She leans forward and presses a kiss to his lips, soft and gentle. She shows him, here in the Lord’s Chambers that had been barred to him through all his childhood, a gesture of love. When she pulls back, his eyes are watering again. “Come, Jon,” she says again, gentler this time. “Let us go to bed.”

The red wolf pulls loose the trap, and the white wolf hobbles out of danger. The wound is still fresh, still open, but the poison has seeped out into the snow. The secret, and the million lies needed to protect it. Sansa pulls the furs over Jon and herself, and kisses his forehead. “Sleep now, Jon Snow,” she says. “You are still loved.”

He weeps still, and she strokes his hair until sleep takes him. Sansa wraps his curls round her fingers as he sinks deeper and deeper into a rest he has not known in many years, and he is _hers_. 


	10. driven by fury

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wowza. I'm done. So it's finished, if you didn't see the chapter count, and before you read I'd like to thank you all for having come this far with me. Always love me some jonsa, and especially love watching Jon get--in some way--shafted for the clusterfuck that was seasons 7-8. Recall that Sansa is dark here, but I think that I've left enough open space here for people to fill in their own gaps. My biggest peeves with the whole Jonaerys schtick (besides the wooden chemistry) was how Jon was apparently so in love with that lady that he decided 'fuck my brother Robb and how he totally died so this kingdom could be free' attitude and how he was somehow insulted when (surprise, dumbass) NO ONE was cool with it. I thought about it over and over, and I decided that Sansa, while ready to hurt him by taking him on a trip through his own twisted psychology, is still a politician and is still thinking of ways to get what she wants. The dark tag came primarily because she's a mindbender. Fucking woof. 
> 
> I've put some thought into it and decided that I'm taking a break from writing canon-era jonsa because the whole 'Jon is a fucking moron' thing really gets my goat. I'm off for greener pastures, greener pastures here being other-era jonsa and stuff. Maybe I'll see some of you there, but if this is where some of you decide to get off the phantomphaeton train, just want you to know it's been a pleasure.

**_‘Here’s to woman! Would that we could fold into her arms without falling into her hands!’ – Ambrose Bierce_ **

Jon sleeps for a day and a half, which sends the castle into a slight panic. Sansa has not dared to inform anyone that the king has passed a full night in her chambers. The safer option for her own reputation would simply be to allow everyone to believe that he has gone missing and sat back to watch the glorious throes of hysteria that grip his royal party as a result. All sorts of theories abound—he’s taken a sullen ride in the woods and camped out, he’s hiding from prying eyes in one of the nooks and crannies of the castle—and then they steady grow more and more outrageous. Mauled by a bear. Threw himself from the Broken Tower. Her personal favorite? Skipped off to Lys to work in a pleasure house. This last one is the single most bizarre one she’s heard yet, but for some reason that makes her cock an eyebrow, many of the ladies who have braved the trek North with him burst into a fit of giggles whenever it is so much as implied.

She keep an eye on Jon while she works in her adjoining parlor, forgoing the use of the solar for the moment. It would be more prudent for her to be present when Jon awakens so he does not stumble out of her door blindly, alerting the entire castle to where he has been. She works with sums and supplies, drafts letters and writes judgements. When her work is done, she turns at last to the jade box. One by one, she feeds the scrolls to the flames. None of them will have her hand—not a single one. Her husband to be has already found his place in her bed, sleeping peacefully for the first time in many years, and he will not have anyone else.

The last two scrolls are from her foreign contacts. Leon Avarris, the handsome socialite with his Braavosi might, may one day thank her for not pursuing the match his parents wished to secure with her. She does not know what gods they keep to in that city, but she might pray to them that he will be successful in swaying his parents to allow him to marry that sweet seamstress Bran informs her he is madly in love with.

Twa Minh, stationed in Pentos, would be colored shocked to know that Sansa had even spoken his name in connection with the word marriage. The scroll in her hand signed with his name is nothing more than a trade agreement, without even the slightest mention of marriage. But a man in love as Jon is will not see anything innocent even in the words ‘trade tariff’. A man in love sees enemies everywhere. She keeps the scroll to be discussed in the council meeting later this week.

The following morning, when she awakens, Jon’s face is buried in her hair. His arms are tight around her waist, and she knows from his breathing that he has finally awakened.

“Sleep well, Jon?”

He grunts. “Better than I have in years,” he says.

“Good,” she sits up, pushing his hands away as she climbs out of the bed and pulls on her robe. “The entire castle thinks you’ve skipped off to Lys to work as a whore.”

Jon sits up, hair a wild curling mess, and chuckles. “I’ve heard it said I’m pretty enough. What do you think?”

“I think you’ve been recklessly seducing ladies of your court,” she says sweetly as she pours him a glass of water.

He takes it with steady hands and gulps it down. “What have you heard?”

“Giggling, mostly. How many of those women have had the privilege of gracing your bedchambers this last year?”

“Only three. None of them are here with me.”

“Are you certain?”

“I am.” Jon insists, sitting up straighter now. “I would not bring them here into this castle, Sansa. I would not bring them under your roof.”

Sansa nods, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Who were they? Your mistresses?”

“They didn’t last long enough to be called that,” he says.

“The only other word is ‘whore’, and we can’t apply that to noblewomen. Who were they?”

“Betta Marbrand, Jeyne Hightower, and Alys Celtigar.”

“What has become of them?”

“They’re still at court.”

“Does anyone know of the nature of their relationship with you?”

“People whisper, I suppose,” he says.

“They’ll need to be married off. Quickly. Before whispers become screams—which they will before long. You’ve been unmarried for too long. Lords will become antsy, if they aren’t already.”

“They are,” he says. “They want me to take a wife.”

“And what have you told them?”

“Nothing yet. But I will tell them today, the ones who are with me now. And I will write to Davos.”

Sansa raises a brow. “And what will you tell them?”

“That I will marry you.”

Sansa leans back against the poster of the bed. “I don’t recall granting my consent to such an arrangement.”

Jon blinks. “I assumed that it was decided when you kissed me last night.”

“The night before last, actually,” she says.

“Really?” Jon asks, looking to the window. “The whole day through?”

Sansa nods. “Gave me a fright. I thought your soul had ascended or something.”

Jon chuckles, falling back against the furs. He notices Sansa watching him still, and he watches her in turn. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“For what?”

“Binding Winterfell to the south again. Bending the knee. Everything that still hurts, I suppose. You were right about all of it. I should have listened to you. I just—” Jon cuts himself off with a sigh, but it is less weighty and more wistful.

“You wanted to be the hero in the story.”

“I wanted to be the hero in every story,” he admits.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Sansa says. “No other man can lay claim to that title in my story. I’m my own hero.”

“Stiff competition,” Jon says.

“The stiffest,” Sansa agrees, and they share a laugh light as a spring shower.

The silence that follows is the first one in years that is not heavy with something, and Sansa is not sorry for all the hurt that made it possible. “Will you forgive me?” he asks.

Sansa sighs. “Perhaps. Not today. But maybe one day.”

Jon nods, leaning back against the pillow once more and staring at the ceiling. “This room is so much smaller than I imagined it would be.”

Sansa smiles. “When I was a child, it looked like a palace in here. But everything that I used to think was great once seems so little now.”

“You’ve become greater.”

“Don’t kiss my arse.”

“Won’t you marry me, Sansa? I wouldn’t have made it this far without you.”

“My place is in Winterfell. I have no interest in ruling the south.”

“We could rule it together.”

“My place is here.”

“Then why did you kiss me if you didn’t mean to marry me?”

Sansa laughs so hard she nearly falls off the bed. “Why did you take three different women to bed if you had no intention of marrying them? Am I to believe that you invited them to your chambers to do nothing but sit around all night and knit scarves?”

Jon sits up so abruptly that she can _feel_ his head spinning. “Was this—was this all a game to you?” he asks.

Sansa shakes her head. “Not completely. Though I did have fun with it.”

Jon gets to his feet now. “What was the point,” he asks. “In getting me to admit that I’m in love with you?”

“To get it to stop haunting you,” she says. “And so you’d find some better way to spend your passions. Anger ages people. Love is far more manageable.”

Jon just stares at her. “Am I a joke to you?” he asks.

“Ask me in a few years,” she says. “I’ll need at least that long to think on welcoming a man to by bed without vomiting.”

Jon looks around the chamber. “Do you find some sick thrill in this?”

“In what?”

“In tormenting me thus.”

“Jon, I don’t know what else to tell you,” Sansa says. “I’d like to say we’ve made real progress. I think that we have. You know what you want. I know what you want. And I also know what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“What I’ve always wanted. Peace. The scattered remains of my family back together. Maybe a life where I don’t have to call anyone who sits on the Iron Throne my sovereign.”

“You want me to relinquish the North,” he says quietly. “And name you its queen.”

Sansa shrugs. “You’ve done it before. And unlike the last queen you handed it to, I do not hold anything over your head. Not aid, not dragon-fire. You tell me you love me, and I believe it. But I will not lift a finger in your direction without the proof of it. In this, Daenerys Targaryen and I are one and the same. Show me the devotion you once showed her. And let the same voice in your mind that fooled you into loving her regardless of what she demanded guide you through this. This kingdom will stand free, and I will be its queen. I will bear your children—Stark sons for the North _and_ the Iron Throne. None of my children will bear that cursed name. We will rule this continent together—separate, but peaceful.”

Jon just watches her. A wistful smile blooms on his face. “Every inch a queen,” he says mournfully. “Was this your plan all along when I arrived?”

“I make many plans,” she says. “And I watch to see them unfold. If something changes, I adjust accordingly. I play the long game, and I fight every battle.”

“Very well, then. If I were to grant you the North, and you ruled as its queen, how would we be together?”

“We’ll need to limit our contact. A few months a year we may share, but you are needed in the south, and I am needed here.”

“It seems an awfully cold way to live.”

“You wanted to be a king, and you wanted me. You may have both, but there is no such thing as paradise.”

Jon sighs. “Were you put on this earth to torment me?” he asks.

She smiles. “I’ve been asking the same of you since we first took back this castle. Give me the North, and I will give you my hand.”

“What sort of life is that? What’s the point in being together if we are not going to be happy together?”

“Awfully bold of you to assume I’d be happy seeing you every day,” Sansa says flatly.

Jon blinks. “Am I so repulsive to you?” he asks.

“Not at all,” Sansa says. “But I have found that husbands are best in smaller doses. And your presence here will challenge my grip in the eyes of the southron lords. You will have me as a wife. I will not admit anyone else to my bed. I will bear children enough to protect this family. I will do my duty to the North, and you will do your duty to me. If this displeases you, return to the south and take up a more willing bride. Otherwise, give me a few years—three at the very least—and then you shall name the day I am to call you my husband.”

Jon rolls over so he is facing her better, fingers weaving through the fur spread, and nods. “The North is yours, Sansa.”

Jon will make good on his word. She knows this because he will not hide behind stupid ideals like honor any longer. She will not allow it, now when he owns that he craves the chance to warm his sister’s bed. She has, with a healer’s blade, cut the wounds from his heart—righted all of their wrongs—and perhaps one day she will turn this blade upon herself and mend her own. There are so many wounds to be healed within herself, and she has become an excellent study of character. A girl who can heal a kingdom, she knows, can one day heal herself. She is a powerful thing, forged from suffering, hardened by pain, and driven by fury. 

“And I am yours, Jon Snow,” she says, and when he holds out his hand to take hers for a kiss, his lips on her fingers are a heady, whispered promise—a vow that she will not allow him to break. He has everything still, and she has him.


End file.
